A First Manual of Composition

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Preface

This edition is a revised and rearranged version. The arrangement of the former book was adapted to the theory that the student should be led to find all his own mistakes. There can be little doubt that a student should learn to be his own critic, but experience shows that he must have more aid in the first year of the high school than he was allowed in the original plan of this book. The directions for revising themes are therefore much modified, the study of punctuation is massed, and a considerable number of exercises is added to each chapter.

The new version has six chapters. Thus it provides one chapter a quarter for two years. The book is best adapted to the first two years of the high fv school; but any such book is available in the last year of a first-class grammar school. The subjects of the six chapters are : (1) Composition in general; (2) Punctuation and sentence-structure; (3) Correctness in the sentence ; (4) Description ; (5) Narration ; (6) Exposition and argument.

In the first chapter the student is introduced to the general purpose of the study, and is drilled in reproduction, summary, and letter- writing. In the second he studies sentence-structure in so far as it bears.on punctuation ; and he applies his new knowl-

Vi PREFACE

edge in short themes. Here is introduced a method which is believed to be new. Instead of correcting faulty punctuation, the student learns by heart forty typical sentences, with their punctuation. These he applies as touchstones to many similar sentences, and ever thereafter to his own work. For example, he learns the sentence " Take therefore no thought for the morrow^ for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself." This fixes in his mind the difference between the preposition /or and the conjunction for, with their bearing on punctuation. In the third chapter he reviews the practical side of his grammar studies, and learns something about idiom. Not all of this chapter will be needed by every pupil. The experienced teacher, now familiar with his students, will give to each some systematic drill suited to his need. This important oral work ends the first year, no themes being required in the later weeks.

The last three chapters constitute the second year's work. They deal in an elementary way with the types of discourse, and the principles of unity, sequence, and contrast as they affect each type. In the chapter on description free use is made of pictures.

A chapter on spelling is added for systematic study. A short lesson in this subject should be given as often as twice a week throughout the two years. Some systems of teaching spelling are doubtless better based in psychology than others. But after all the important thing is to teach the subject as a subject. Ten minutes of attention fixed on ten words is worth hours of theorizing. The spelling lesson should, of course, always include the

PEEFACE Vii

use of the words in sentences. When Mrs. Malaprop spoke of "ingenuity and artifice," she exactlyhit off the method by which such sentences must come into existence.

The period of life for which such books as this are designed is important beyond words, and most diffi-\ cult to instruct. Neither child nor adolescent, the \ student lives in the most significant of mental moments, the transition from the irresponsible, sensory child to the responsible and rational youth. To interest and yet to discipline, to stir the imagination and yet educate the will — these are the difficult and disparate tasks of the teacher who works in the lower grades of the secondary school. The present writer does not pretend to make any large contribution to the solution of the general problem. But in the last six years he has known personally a thousand of these younger boys and girls, has spent many a happy and anxious hour with them in their studies, and now wishes god-speed to every teacher who tries to get nearer the heart and mind of this age. . .

The author is grateful to several friends for criticism in the work of revision : especially to his colleagues Messrs. P. B. Kohlsaat and Lewis Gustafson, and to Mr. Alfred M. Hitchcock of Hartford. He must further thank Mr. Gustafson for adapting to their present use several of the selections quoted in the first chapter. To Professor Frederick Starr and to Dr. G. W. Post he is obliged for permission to reproduce certain photographs.